After 35 Years, Longtime Leader Steps Aside as Nation's Largest Arab American Nonprofit Names Its Next CEO

DEARBORN, Mich. — For more than three decades, Maha Freij has been a fixture at ACCESS, the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, helping grow it from a local aid group into what is widely described as the largest Arab American nonprofit in the country. This fall, that chapter comes to a close: Freij is retiring as president and CEO, and the organization's board has unanimously chosen her longtime chief operating officer, Lina Hourani-Harajli, to take over on October 1. The transition, announced in mid-July by ACCESS and covered by both the Detroit Free Press and The Arab American News, marks a rare changing of the guard at an institution that has become deeply woven into Metro Detroit's civic and cultural life. Freij joined ACCESS in 1991 and has spent 35 years there, the last five as president and CEO. Under her watch, the organization expanded well beyond direct social services — health clinics, job training, resettlement assistance — into a network of nationally recognized institutions: the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, the Center for Arab American Philanthropy, the Center for Arab Narratives, and the National Network for Arab American Communities, which links similar organizations across the U.S. Freij also led fundraising campaigns that helped build the museum and, more recently, financed the ACCESS Recovery Center, a substance-abuse treatment facility slated to open this fall. ACCESS board chair Hussien Shousher credited her with building "a culture of leadership and continuity" inside the organization — the kind that made this succession possible without an outside search. That continuity now falls to Hourani-Harajli, a Dearborn resident who joined ACCESS in 2000 in the finance department and rose through the ranks, becoming chief operating officer in 2014. In that role she oversaw ACCESS's roughly 120 programs, founded its business operations division, led the buildout of several of its facilities, and worked on the organization's human resources, IT, and communications functions. She holds a business degree from the University of Michigan-Dearborn and a nonprofit management certificate from Harvard Business School, and she currently serves as treasurer of Michigan's Commission on Middle Eastern American Affairs, a state advisory board. In a statement, Hourani-Harajli said she was "honored by the trust the Board has placed in me" and pointed to ACCESS's 55-year history as a foundation to build on rather than a legacy to simply preserve. Freij, for her part, framed the handoff in institutional terms: "Together, we have built something larger than ourselves — an institution rooted in community, guided by purpose, and prepared to serve future generations." The leadership change comes at a moment when ACCESS, with reported assets around $109 million, has significant financial heft behind its mission — but also at a time when Arab American and Muslim communities nationally are navigating heightened scrutiny of federal immigration policy and shifting political headwinds. Organizations like ACCESS have positioned themselves as both service providers and advocates, making the identity of who leads them a matter of real consequence beyond Dearborn. For now, the plan is continuity rather than disruption. Freij will stay on as a strategic adviser through the transition, easing Hourani-Harajli into a role that, by all accounts, she has effectively been training for over more than a decade inside the organization.